You Call That Art?

On another discussion board, I happened along a thread concerning copyright law, which I won't bore you with. It was brought up in terms of the new Sherlock Holmes movie starring Robert Downey, Jr., and how the woman who supposedly owns the rights to Holmes isn't going to allow a sequel if they keep up the homoerotic overtones she feels Downey's Holmes is displaying. (I haven't seen it yet so I don't know anything about it).

As the discussion went along, a link to a documentary called, "RiP: A Remix Manifesto," was put up.

Here it is: http://www.hulu.com/watch/88782/rip-a-remix-manifesto

I honestly couldn't make it more than a few minutes in because during the opening scenes of a club DJ getting ready for a gig, the director/narrator played us clips of songs from the Jackson Five and Queen and asked us if we knew who the artists were, and apparently if we guessed the Jackson Five and Queen, we were wrong. No, the ARTIST was the DJ who goes by the name, "Girl Talk." See, the ARTIST took those two songs and did a mash-up using a computer. He is an ARTIST and combining a Jackson Five and Queen song is his WORK OF ART.

Bullshit, I say, and bullshit, I said in the discussion. Of course, people roundly attacked me for that opinion. I'm still right, of course, but it got me thinking about several things.

Firstly, one of the more eye-opening things (for me) that a professor ever said was how all works of art (especially theatrical) are not original; they're all based on something else. As he explained it, "You move the pinky of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, and the toe of Citizen Kane wiggles." Maybe not those two movies in particular, but you get the idea. The 1956 sci-fi thriller, "Forbidden Planet," is based off of William Shakespeare's, "The Tempest," for example. Recently, comparisons between, "Avatar," and "Dances with Wolves," have been made.

Secondly, what about sampling? Rap music is notorious for it, once being so prevalent a humorous news story was written that because all known recordings had already been sampled, a new rap song was forced to sample itself. Some rappers do overly-rely on sampling, but I guess what saves them is that they at least provide the vocals.

Diverging just a bit, we also have covers of songs. And from there, it's a small leap (for me) to balloon twisting.

See, when I'm asked for a monkey by a kid, I don't make a monkey design I came up with. I make Don Caldwell's monkey (Don is a "famous" twister) with some modifications. It's relatively fast, uses five balloons, is fun to watch being made, and looks great. I'm essentially doing a cover of Don's monkey and making money off of it just like a Beatles Tribute Band makes money off, "Yellow Submarine." I have plenty of other sculptures that I do that are originals, but Don's monkey is too good not to do, and he's given permission (in the form of DVD tutorials) to make that sculpture and many others.

So I don't think of myself as a hack like I do Girl Talk. I recognize what Girl Talk does takes skill, and that he entertains others in a fashion I'll never be able to, but he's not an artist. Am I? I don't know.

I've DJ'ed before - nothing on the level of what he does in clubs. I did not scratch records; I didn't have two turntables and a microphone; I did not insist on being called a stupid name like, "Girl Talk." I just played songs .

See, when I was kicking around grad school, I was members of the various Hispanic/Latin groups there, and one of them was a dancing club that taught every week and would normally be in charge of DJ'ing the groups' parties, the various members taking shifts during the night. The "theory" of playing songs that I was exposed to was that you try to find songs that would fade out and into each other well, so that when one song ended, you would fade it out as you brought up the other song. That way, the transitions aren't too jarring. Of course, being who I am, I would still sometimes ignore that rule much to the anguish of the club member who thought he knew it all.

So, there I was, connecting two songs by overlapping them. I didn't even use a computer to do it. I did it the hard way and actually had to rely on my own innate sense of timing. I did EXACTLY what Girl Talk does at its simplest form. If I were to call myself an artist because of it, I would say, "Its purest form." Are all those songs now MY works of art? No.

What Girl Talk and others are getting kudos for is that how they combine the songs is prettier, and I'll admit it, takes more work than what I did. It doesn't make it their work of art though, and it doesn't make them artists anymore than I would be an artist if I took the Mona Lisa and glued it into George Seurat's, "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte," even if I did use a really nice technique and put glitter over the connection points and made it look fabulous.

This February, I'll be going to Chicago to go to a balloon twisting convention that will have competitions for small, medium, and large sculptures. I'm going to be entering the large competition. Pieces of my sculpture will feature techniques learned from other twisters, which will be re-worked into my own design.

Whether or not someone considers it art or says I'm an artist matters to me. I will be putting in effort and drawing from hours and hours of learning my craft to do this and enjoying myself. I will not grab two other entries and connect them with a single balloon and claim it as my own. That would make me a hack.

Like Girl Talk.